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The 2nd stop on our Carnival Magic cruise…Belize! This is a Tender Port. Just my luck, as we are on the tender and headed to the port we suddenly notice that the ship seemed to have disappeared. Then we realized that it was behind the rain. Nothing like being out in the middle of the ocean on an open boat and seeing a storm quickly approaching you. We got drenched. The Carnival description for the Land Rover and Cave Expedition excursion must be out of date. We had a great time, it just wasn’t what we were expecting and Belize is not anything like I had pictured. The river was my favorite part of the port.

First we took a boat ride up the river. They said we might see some wildlife. All we got were 2 iguanas and some termite nests. The group before us did get to see a crocodile though.

The boat took us to the farm where we picked up our Land Rover. The Land Rover’s hold 8 people and only 2 people get to drive. They are all manual transmission vehicles and you have to have your driver’s license with you. The Carnival website had this description of the excursion… “You’ll feel like Indiana Jones as you traverse through raw jungle trails in a rugged 4×4 Land Rover and trek through ancient Mayan caves.” I didn’t have an Indiana Jones hat and we drove on roads more than we did jungle.

Part of the roads were really dusty too.

We did get a little muddy but that was from just one small part of our drive.

The cave was okay but not real exciting. There were rocks and bats. I might have appreciated it more if it wasn’t for the excursion I’m going to post tomorrow.

This was the river we had to cross to get to and from the cave. You have to cross a long, swaying suspension bridge so if you are scared of heights this might not be the excursion for you.

After we finished exploring the cave, they took us back to “camp”. They had fruit, rum punch and sodas. There were also a couple of vendors there that you could buy things from. Hindsight, I wish I would have gotten something from one of them because the shopping at this port was awful! One of the vendors was selling food. It looked delicious but we didn’t get any. When we got on the bus to return back to the port, one of the workers asked if any of us had gotten the food and asked what we had. When they told him that they had chicken, beans & rice and banana bread he said “are you sure that’s what you had?” They all said yes and he said “are you sure that was chicken?” Which is why I prefer to not eat when I’m not in Texas. He told us the story of the Queen of England coming to Belize and wanting to eat one of their traditional meals. They fed her and then afterwards she asked what it was. They told her it was “Paca” which is apparently another word for big, hairy rat. So the Paca is now referred to as the Royal Rat in Belize. Apparently she wasn’t happy about being fed rat. I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t be seeing any Paca recipes on my blog.